From Signing to Savings: How Digital Signatures Can Boost Productivity
As part of SGTech on-going webinar series to share interesting insights about Singapore’s tech industry, the SGTech team co-hosted an online webinar with GovTech and Netrust to introduce the future of digital signature technology.
Two key solutions, GovTech’s “Sign with SingPass” and Netrust’s “nSign", which would help streamline their business workflows, eliminate traditional paper-based signing processes and boost productivity, were shared with the attendees.
Welcome Address by SGTech Cyber Security Chapter Chairman Mr Dutch Ng
Mr Ng kickstarted the session with an introduction of SGTech as a premier trade association for the tech industry in Singapore. Within a rapidly evolving technology landscape, SGTech strives to create an ecosystem that anticipates trends and develops sustainable initiatives to strengthen the community and help the industry grow.
Given how businesses are constantly on the lookout for productivity improvement opportunities, Mr Ng expressed his excitement in introducing the industry to digital signatures.
Mr Ng (Cyber Security Chapter Chairman of SGTech) shares how the organization plays an integral role in the tech industry in Singapore.
Introduction to “Sign with SingPass” by GovTech Senior Product Manager Mr Tew Ming Wei
Mr Tew introduced “Sign with SingPass” as Singapore’s first of five smart nation strategic projects announced in 2017. The purpose of this service is to enable simpler transactions for residents, businesses, and government agencies alike.
National Digital Identity (NDI) is a platform that enables a single digital identity, the SingPass App – a must-have for citizens to transact with both the public and private sectors revolving around 6 core product suites – Sign with Signpass being one of them.
Tackling the misconceptions between the differences between commonplace electronic signatures practices versus secure electronic signatures like “Sign with SingPass”, Mr Tew shared how the latter provides greater legal assurance with legal presumption amongst many other benefits.
Mr Tew also delved into greater details on how “Sign with SingPass” offers a secure e-signature that is under sole control, uniquely linked and identifier to the signer.
The features of a uniquely linked e-signature include:
- Greater legal assurance: Able to secure electronic signatures with legal presumptions
- Data integrity: Signed documents are tamper-proof
- Free digital certificates: Residents are not required to pay for digital certificates
- Seamless digital certificates: Able to scan, review and authenticate to sign remotely or physically
- Portable: Verifiable across different systems
Next, Mr Tew shared a quick user journey on navigating the process of signing a digital document via a mobile app. For businesses interested in adopting “Sign with SingPass”, Mr Tew shared two options:
- Commercial product vendors – like Netrust and others (please refer to GovTech’s press release for a full vendor list)
- Custom development of API (Application Programming Interface) – GovTech offers an API course where a development team can work with them for a customized solution
Citing examples of pilot projects with SLA, AIA, and other agencies, Mr Tew elaborated how this service has been adopted with meaningful cost and time savings.
For those keen on other potential applications, he also provided the roadmap for future uses, which includes cross-border acceptance, corporate digital signing, expanding into other industries, and more.
The Importance of Digital Signatures & Sign with SingPass Demo by Netrust Business Development Director Mr Aaron Fu
As an industry expert in cyber security, Netrust’s Business Development Director Mr Fu illustrated how Netrust can help businesses integrate digital signature solutions into their processes.
Mr Fu demonstrated how “Sign with SingPass” is integrated into the business application and how it works.
Mr Fu shared various applications where digital signatures could come into play, from media releases in PDF to legal contractual agreements like financial loan applications.
Following this, he touched on some of the challenges with physical signatures, which range from the lack of accessibility to wastage of money, time, and resources to print, copy and store documents and more.
Mr Fu highlighted the key differences between digital signatures and electronic signatures –why digital signatures are the clear way forward.
For those interested in how digital signature works, Mr Fu also explained what goes on behind the scenes – from the creation of the document fingerprint by the sender to the verification process by the receiver. The latter, a critical step to ensure the security of the process, relies on verification of the sender’s unique digital certificate – in which trusted third-party providers facilitate on the backend.
Netrust provides a variety of signing solutions to cater to different business needs:
- Basic digital signing for documents and encrypted emails
- nSign to help business application to enable digital signing for SingPass or non SingPass users. nSign consist of four different modules – NDI (SingPass), Mobile, Desktop and Online.
For businesses keen on a step-by-step process of how Netrust’s solutions (e.g. nSign) work, Mr Fu provided several simple demonstrations for different use cases.
Q&A moderated by Mr Ng
After the sharing by Mr Fu and Mr Tew, audience members took the opportunity to pose a range of questions to the expert panellists – from the legality and security of digital signatures, common use cases for Sign for SingPass and nSign, the types of software that digital signatures are supported on, as well as the costs and duration to implement and integrate such solutions with enterprise systems. Both Mr Fu and Mr Tew took the time to given comprehensive answers to the different queries.
Interested to watch the full discussion?
Watch the complete webinar session below.
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